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Space Weapons Technology
Starship and space weapons Small craft such as shuttles and pinnaces do not use starship weapons, but larger versions of personal weapons. They are not intended to fight starships. In The Shadow of Saganami we learn that pinnaces are equipped with an equivalent of starship point-defense lasers which can be quite deadly to unarmored merchant ships at close range. Laser Lasers are the most common energy weapon. Anti-ship lasers have lenses that range from several decimeters to over a meter in diameter; they have effective ranges of about 1,000,000 kilometers (500,000 km against targets with sidewalls). A majority of ships also mount clusters of smaller, point-defense lasers for the anti-missile duty, but are powerful enough to destroy shuttlecraft. In some modern navies, point-defence lasers have replaced older point-defense projectile guns. A ship's broadside lasers and grasers would be physically shifted forward through the hatch in the surface of the ship and lock their lenses into holes in the sidewall.Honor Harrington though it amusing that modern space navy weapons had to "run out" their guns like the muzzle-loaded cannon of Ancient Earth wet navies. (HHA3:MMH) This was because the lenses were not optical but gravitic, and the emitter head needed some clearance in order to be safely activated. (HHA3:MMH) Graser Grasers are lasers operating in the gamma ray range (the name is an abbreviation of Gamma Ray Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). Considered vastly superior in both strength and size when compared to lasers, grasers are often only seen in small numbers in smaller ships, due to their larger mass. The new Shrike light attack craft (LACs) of the Royal Manticoran Navy carry a single graser, about the size and power of a battlecruiser's graser. The size can be put into context, when a ship weighing 20,000–30,000 tonnes can only carry one graser, four attack missile tubes with 20 missiles, and four counter missile tubes with magazine space for one hundred counter missiles. When the graser is taken off the LAC, as seen in the Ferret-class LAC, the missile capacity leaps to 56 attack missiles and 150 counter missiles, as well as a "stern wall" generator in addition to the "bow wall". Not much is known about their technical details. (See Missile) Missiles come in varying masses, depending on the ship class that fires it, with larger vessels capable of firing missiles that have slightly more acceleration and heavier warheads. Missiles may be tipped with various heads, including contact fusion warheads, bomb-pumped laser warheads, sidewall penetrators, and ECM to help missile breach defenses. Some smaller missiles may even be purely kinetic. Anti-missile defenses include rolling a ship's wedge, electronic countermeasures, countermissiles, and point defense. Energy torpedo Not actually torpedoes of any kind, they are self-sustaining masses of plasma that can be projected against targets at ranges of up to 300,000 km. They are very destructive, capable of rapid fire, and are nearly impossible to intercept since they travel at near light speed. However, they are direct fire weapons and completely stopped by sidewalls, so they are never used as the primary energy weapon of a vessel. Grav lance The grav lance is a gravitic weapon that allows an attacking ship to take down a target's sidewall. It does this by "pushing" the target's impeller wedge out of alignment, which overloads the sidewall. The grav lance is huge, short-ranged and requires almost all the firing ship's power. The grav lance utilizes the firer's drive nodes, so only a starship can mount it. No LAC, missile, drone, or buoy has enough power generation, internal volume, or node strength necessary to utilize it. Admiral Sonja Hemphill promoted this weapon. The Crippler (Gravitic Heterodyne) Similar in effect to and longer ranged than the grav lance, the 'Crippler' can bring down a target's impeller wedge by causing a resonance in the target's wedge frequency. The effect induces a current in key drive components, in effect overloading the electronics and causing a blowout in the drive. This removes the ship's primary passive defense (the impeller wedge) and leaving it unable to move. Highly effective against merchant ships, the Crippler is ineffective against warships due to the pair of impeller stress bands generated for both the roof and floor of the wedge. Attempting to overload one stress band would simply flow back into the other band, preventing resonance. Defense Weapons technology in the Honorverse is hugely capable, and starships must carry similarly impressive defenses. Gravitic & Energy Based Shielding :See: Sidewall Starships are immune to attack from above or below due to the impeller wedge. As long as the impellers are powered, a ship can project sidewalls, weaker versions of the wedge, as shields on either side. Sidewalls are non-ablative, gravitic stress bands, and thus weaker lasers and grasers are bent away, or refracted like light is when it passes through denser mediums. In this instance, the focused light is bent by the intense gravity in the sidewall. Sidewalls are invulnerable to non-massless/lightspeed weapons as they would be destroyed by the gravitic shear caused by the sidewall. When the series begins, it was thought to be unacceptable to close the bow or stern of the wedge with a wall; to do so would prevent any acceleration. The Manticoran Shrike-class LAC is fitted with a bow wall, since it was deemed acceptable to lose the ability to accelerate in order to use the powerful spinal weapons the LACs mount. Later, some creative engineering builds a stern wall capability into LACs. The idea proved so successful that newer construction, such as the ''Edward Saganami-B class heavy cruisers, are equipped with bow and stern walls. Further refinements to the bow and stern wall system can be seen in the Edward Saganami-C heavy cruiser class. The bow and stern walls are of a special "two-phase" type. A smaller, inner wall can be raised independently of the main bow wall. The smaller wall does not completely seal the forward aspect of the wedge; it only protects against attacks from directly ahead. However, it does not interfere with thrust or maneuvering. The next layer of defense is the anti-radiation and anti-particle shielding that exists between the sidewall and hull. While not nearly as strong as a sidewall, it does help attenuate any incoming attack, especially if already weakened by the sidewall. Physical Defense Ships are also protected by many layers of armor that alternate between ablative composites that absorb energy from energy weapons and solid anti-kinetic layers. Since the impeller wedge is impenetrable, the armor of a ship on the sides and hammerheads is considerably thicker than the back and belly armor, the side armor of a superdreadnought is well over a meter thick. Inside, there are more armored bulkheads. Even with this tremendous defense, at close range, the energy weapons of any starship are more than enough to destroy a larger ship. Superdreadnoughts, dreadnoughts, and (to a much lesser extent) battleships also use their own internal structure to limit damage. These ships are so massive that huge reinforcing framing structures and internal compartmentalization can be built in. This allows any damage that gets through the other defenses to be limited from reaching too deep into the ship. Though this is rarely mentioned, starship hulls are 'grown' using nanotechnology, and can be repaired in similar fashion. Using nanotech growing also helps reduce potential breakpoints as the hull becomes a seamless whole. Electronic Warfare System Warships also utilize a complex suite of electronic warfare systems. These systems utilize jammers, decoys, and stealth in order to help defeat or confuse incoming missiles. Warships have massive computer suites and emitters built into them that allows them to confuse incoming fire and help conceal and stealth the ships emissions. Warships also utilize specialized drones and decoys that are deployed outside of the ship. The power requirements for these are so high that it is impossible to have it run on internal power; instead, it must stay close to the ship on a tractor and receive beamed power. As a result, a warship can deploy only a handful of them. Point Defense A warship's active defense is two layered. The first line of active defense is the countermissile. Countermissiles are used to intercept incoming missiles at ranges of 1 to 2 million kilometers. Countermissiles have no warheads; they merely will attempt to overlap their impeller wedges with those of the attacker's missiles. This overlap is mutually destructive as the gravitic stress vaporizes the nodes of both missiles. Countermissiles are much much smaller than ship-killers (approximately 12 tons), and are usually fired from dedicated launchers. Countermissiles are less capable of independent targeting than attack missiles, which means they can lose lock by the electronic counter measures carried by the attack missile. However, they are capable of much higher accelerations. The current tactical reality is that many countermissiles have to be fired in order to generate a kill. It is possible to fire many countermissiles as one canister from a standard missile tube, similarly to a shotgun. However, this is only used to maintain a constant level of defensive fire if counter missile launchers are destroyed. If an attack missile manages to break through the countermissile engagement zone, the last line of active defense is the point defense laser cluster. A laser cluster is a grouping of a number of individually weak lasers, much weaker than an anti-ship laser. While this reduces the range, it allows for a higher refire rate per cluster. A laser cluster typically has enough time for 1 shot before the attack missile can engage the ship. Supplementing the point defense clusters is the ship's energy armament. Lasers and grasers can be tasked to also engage incoming missiles. Other Systems Recon Drone A recon drone is an automated probe that extends the sensor range of a ship. The drones have an drive system, ECM emitter, and passive and active sensor arrays. * See Main Article at Recon Drone Other Related Technology * Tractor Beam - A tractor beam was used to tow objects and other related purposes. The People's Republic of Haven Navy Sultan class battlecruisers were equipped with tractor beams. (The Honor of the Queen) See also * Induced gamma emission Category:Technology Category:Space Weapons Technology